SBTW sues DCNR for right to raft

A Somerset County summer camp is suing the state for the right to raft the Youghiogheny River with its own guides.

Summer’s Best Two Weeks, a Christian youth camp located along the Quemahoning Reservoir, is challenging a state mandate that commercial businesses may only raft the popular white-water river if they are guided by commercial outfitters.

For more than 30 years, Summer’s Best Two Weeks counselors served as the campers’ white-water guides. But in 2001, the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources — the state agency that controls access to the river — decided that the camp must use outfitters as guides instead. They have not been on the river ever since.

The libertarian law firm Institute for Justice is representing Summer’s Best Two Weeks in the case. Staff attorney Jeff Rowe argued before three Commonwealth Court judges in Harrisburg Monday that the department’s decision violates the camp’s right to liberty, as guaranteed by the Pennsylvania Constitution.

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“This is a backward rule that turns a legendary stretch of public white water into a for-profit amusement park ride,” Rowe said.

Other groups, including Boy Scouts of America Troop 99 of Lancaster and a white-water group from Slippery Rock University, have also been prohibited from using the river without guides, Rowe said. But private groups are permitted to travel the river without outfitters.

Summer’s Best Two Weeks campers rode the Lower Yough, which courses through Class III and Class IV rapids, and the trip was considered the pinnacle of the camp’s outdoor program, said camp director Kent Biery. Campers could begin taking the trip when they were 12. They can stay at the camp until they are 18. On average, the camp would take 750 to 800 campers down the river per summer. The counselors who guided the trip had the same training as the outfitters, Biery said.

If the court rejects the camp’s arguments, this summer will mark the first year that a generation of campers have never run the river, Biery said.

“The state is acting in a manner that is limiting our rights to be on the river to protect the financial interests of the outfitters,” he said.

That’s not true, according to one outfitter. Liz McCarty, daughter of Laurel Highlands River Tours owner Mike McCarty, said the outfitters are concerned about safety and preserving the river as a natural resource.

Four companies, including Laurel Highlands River Tours, are state-approved to guide rafters on the river. The companies set up a concessionaire program in the late ‘60s. The companies’ contracts are renewed every 10 years and they pay the state a 7.5 percent fee on their revenue. Each company follows designated put-in and pull-out times and abides by a limit on the number of rafters they may put on the water at once.

“It’s not that the state park is trying to guard the outfitters as far as the financial standpoint,” McCarty said. “But we’re trying to make sure it’s safe and everybody has a good time. Sometimes you can wait above a rapid for 15 minutes. We’re trying to make sure it’s not overly congested.”

Laurel Highlands River Tours offered to guide Summer’s Best Two Weeks campers at a discount rate, but the camp management was not interested.

Biery said he declined the offer because the camp uses the trip as an adventurous experience to build Christian character. With commercial outfitters, it does not serve the same purpose. Also, parents entrust their children to the camp, not to the outfitters, he said.

In 30 years of rafting, the camp never had an accident, the camp director said.

The attorney general’s office, which is representing the department in the case, did not respond to repeated interview requests.

Rowe, the camp’s attorney, said the Commonwealth Court could make the decision in two weeks or two months. If the court quickly decides in the camp’s favor, Biery said they’ll work hard to organize the trips this summer. If the decision does not come until June, it could be harder to pull the trip together.

If the court sides with the state, Rowe said the camp can appeal the case directly to the state Supreme Court.